Saturday, February 28, 2015

“The best laid plans”, it has been said, are not immune
to change, and nowhere is the more true than on the remarkable islands of CaboVerde. Tourists and travellers to this island nation really fit into one of two
groups, those who stay put and those who wander. I am of the latter.

One curiosity of Cabo Verde is the paucity of
inter-island transportation; the national airline, TACV, flies between the
islands with an imaginative schedule, an almost complete disregard for
punctuality and a flair for the dramatic. Competition is non-existent, and
those who have tried are driven from the market rather unceremoniously. The
islands are, one imagines, rather too widely scattered for an adequate boat service, and the waters in this part of the Atlantic a touch choppy for
sensitive stomachs.

There is also the wind. And here one needs to be frank;
the winds of Cabo Verde are relentless, sometimes a mere “heavy breeze” that
cools the African sun, and sometimes a sandblasting wall that brings dust from
the Sahara and liberally scatters it over the islands making flights rather
precarious. In fact, on one day of this past two weeks, all flights in the
islands were cancelled because of the strong winds, and yesterday, the
Harmattan wind from the mainland scoured the islands with desert sands once
more interrupting the best laid plans of mice, men and visitors.

So it was a week ago that the decision was made not to
travel to the remote island of Brava and its neighbour, Fogo, the volcanic
island. The weather was reasonable, but with the Praia/Boston flight operating
only weekly, and the possibility of being stranded was not insignificant, the
decision was made to remain on the main island of Santiago instead, and explore
without the risk of becoming marooned in the shadow of an erupting volcano.

The important thing here is the ability to change plans
at the last moment, and travelling to Cabo Verde, an endeavour that I would
heartily endorse, really requires some delicate planning, and the assistance of
a very understanding and competent local agent.

Firstly, the order of events needs to be established,
with the riskiest being placed at the front end of the itinerary; secondly, the
ability to change without recourse to an insurance company needs to be assured.
If one cannot travel to Fogo because of some climatic or technical surprise,
the credit from the unused hotel in Fogo should be transferrable to another
property elsewhere. Finally, of course, tourists to Cabo Verde need to believe
that there is someone watching over them, ready to alter course when necessary.

Fortunately, in our case, we were able to change plans
without difficulty; I feel for the small guesthouse operator in Brava who lost
out on three nights’ revenue, but one supposes that over a season as many
people get stuck in situ as fail to
arrive. As tourism is an important part of the economy of the country as a
whole, and the small islands in particular, their long-term success will only
be assured if visitors can be secure in the thought that itinerary changes will
not be punished.

It is, of course, the same everywhere. As many of you
know, I am heavily involved with tourism in Canada’s Arctic, and this too is a
region beset with climatic peculiarities that can shatter the plans, laid as
best as one can, into tiny pieces. An understanding of this, and attention to
this issue by regional government and trade associations is a very important
factor in developing higher visitor numbers to peripheral regions.

I digress, however; remaining on the island of Santiago
has been fun and interesting. The village of Tarrafal in the north of Santiago
has the most beautiful beach setting in the country and a couple of pretty
nice, if architecturally eccentric hotels.

Tarrafal, Santiago

There is an interesting prison camp,
a stark reminder of the brutality of the Portuguese dictatorships and the
savagery of its colonial wars, there are wonderful roads driving through
valleys carved by eons of caustic winds, and seascapes that will take one’s
breath away.

Solitary Confinement

A reminder of the recent past

Finally, there is the remarkable community of Cidade Velha, the first European settlement in the tropics founded in 1463, and still
offering visitors a mosaic of glimpses into the fascinating 500 year history of
these captivating islands.

"Banana Street", the first European housing

I head away tomorrow to São Tomé, another formerly
Portuguese island some five hours flight to the southeast; my Lusophilia is far
from satisfied, and the two weeks spent in Cabo Verde have simply whetted my
appetite to return to this complex and fascinating island nation.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

In the argot of today, and the overuse of superlatives,
it is difficult to describe an island as remarkable as this; São Antão, the
most northwesterly island in the Cabo Verde archipelago, is quite simply
stunning. It is beautiful, it is remarkable, it is friendly, it is simple and beyond
all, it is quite astonishing that it has remained off travel radars for so
long.

It is, however, probably a good thing.

São Antão offers visitors some unique opportunities for
travel, in particular for hikers, and those seeking destinations with little or
no time for the vagaries of mass tourism. There is scenery, some rather
picturesque villages, a curious cobbled road system, some dramatic seascapes
and one hears, in the summer, beaches. There are small guesthouses, a couple of
larger “resorts”, and some friendly local restaurants.

The Ribeira

There are no international chains, there is limited English spoken, although French is widely understood, and although there are
some guides, it is an island to explore on one’s own to a great degree.

I absolutely love it. It is awkward to get to since the airstrip
was closed due to regular and brutal cross winds, so access is by ferry from
the neighbouring island of São Vicente; once here, one can rent a vehicle as I
have, or travel by the local “buses” that criss-cross the island. For those
seeking peace, quiet and an opportunity to hike in the dramatic hill country,
no vehicle is really necessary.

It is an island for whom time appears to have stood
still; houses lie half or one third completed, time seems to have a different
dimension and folks spend a great deal of their time talking and enjoying the
locally produced grogue. It is a poor
island; some agriculture and grogue-manufacture, and oddly the export of local
sand apparently perfect for the manufacture of cement are the local industries,
and now, of course, tourism. There is talk of resorts, new hotels and other
investments, but it is an early stage, and one wonders if the implications for the
society who call São Antão home have been considered.

Pombas

The village of Pombas

Pombas, a local bar

All too often, tourism fails to bring the promised benefits to the local communities, and its profits are dispatched elsewhere leaving only menial work and the promise of souvenir sales to boost the local economy. And besides this, the island’s very core attraction, its peaceful and natural environment, would be indelibly changed with too many more tourists.

We will see.

The Carnival in Pombas

Today, however, and I think for the foreseeable future, the island is a destination that should be considered by any traveller wanting to get off the beaten path, yet who want a veneer of familiarity, The island is African; it lies off the coast of Senegal, its people are indisputably African and yet due to its long association with Portugal retains a slight sense of Europe in the architecture, food and language. It is, however, not European, and the vibrancy of its culture, so evident in its music and in particular during one of its many festivals, is distinctly African.

A coutry road

The fishing fleet in Cruzinha da Garca

And that is its core charm; while we are lured into
believing that we understand the country, we don’t. Each turn offers another
surprise, each encounter a new idea; it is like hearing a different language
spoken, and believing that one hears a string of English words lying within. It
is understandable yet mysterious, and its charms will fail to embrace any
visitor arriving with an open mind and a desire to seek a new, charming and culturally
sophisticated country.

Monday, February 16, 2015

It has to be said that few tourists get to Amapa; fewer
still arrive by pirogue, a motorised canoe, from French Guyana, and sadly those
who do, do not linger.

Arrival in Oiapoque

It is a pity really; travelling overland from Suriname to
NE Brazil was the idea, and from all of the research that had been done, and
frankly there was not a great deal to digest, Macapá, the regional capital, was
not recommended as a place to linger. Hints of its darker side, and the
potential danger that tourists would find, made us book a quick passage out,
and across the giant Amazon Delta to Belem, and apparent safety.

Macapá, however, was actually really rather nice.

I digress, however, and need to rewind to Cayenne, the dopey
provincial capital of French Guyana, the improbable French department snuggled
between Suriname to the west and Brazil to the south and east. Cayenne is
rather a lovely place, its dopiness translating into a pleasantly laid back
approach to life, and a general air of mañana; not that there really is a word
in the argot of French Guyana that carries the implied sense of urgency that mañana
does, but there you go; it is a department that relies almost exclusively on
the substantial revenue that the Kourou Space Centre generates, and for the
rest, well ….

Le Palmistes, an important cafe!

Cayenne

So after unwinding there for a couple of days, we hit the
road by “taxi” to St. Georges de l’Ayapoque, the French border community. This
was just fine, and the three-hour (€40 each) ride brought us to the town at
about 1.00pm; in the middle of the French lunch-break.

Naturally, the customs post was closed for their
requisite two-hour meal, and would not reopen until 3.00pm; “or perhaps 4.00”,
we were advised. So with this in mind, we booked into a simple hotel and
decided to stay for the night.

The St. George's Bar & Restaurant

St. Georges is lovely; it is so slow that it has almost
stopped, and it retains the air of a river town out of a novel by Somerset Maugham or Evelyn Waugh.
The road from Cayenne was only completed in 2008, and to that point, all access
was by river and thus limited to necessities and the Ways of The Water.

The Oiapoque River

Sitting, enjoying some pleasant rosé wine, we were in
France after all, watching the river flow by, and admiring the periodic canoes
crossing back and forth to Brazil was very pleasant; when dinner time came, we
were advised that all of the meat was “viande
du forêt”, or basically, armadillo, peccary and that sort of thing. No problem,
and washed down with a touch more rosé we mellowed, and forgot about the
twelve-hour 4WD or sixteen-hour bus ride that we had planned for the following
day.

The Demon Drink!

Waking with a sluggish head in the morning we vaguely remembered
trying the local rum at some point in the evening, and laughing rather a lot
about something that now completely escaped us. However, we had prudently had our
passports stamped the evening before during a rare moment of activity at the
border post, as so we crossed to Oiapoque on the Brazilian side of the river.

It was actually a fairly long ride as we headed some ten
kilometres or so upstream to the much larger and more frenetic Brazilian side.
There, the border post was no simpler to work with as firstly it was about a
kilometre and a half from the dock, and secondly it operated to a similar
temporal beat to the French. Fortunately, despite feeling the results of a
slight over-refreshment on the previous night, we were out early, and had our
passports duly stamped, and thence to Macapá,

As it turned out, getting a ride was simple. The bus
would cost 90 Reis ($30); to take a seat in a 4WD would cost 150 reis ($50),
and so we decided to splurge and buy the four seats for the two of us for $200,
thus ensuring that our luggage would be inside and not getting drenched during
the inevitable rain.

We set off expecting the worst, and after about 50kms of
paved road we found it. The asphalt turned abruptly to red mud and rock, and
the recent rains had done little to improve the surface. We bounced, slid and bullied
our way south, our driver clearly having made this trip many times between the various
spells in prison that we deduced from his alarming tattoo collection.

The road was not good; it was, or at least should not
have been, fast, and after some three hours or so, we swung of the red mud into
the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Buffets, priced by the weight of your choices, thus pricing rice and
stew equally (which says something about the stew), are the order of the Brazilian
kitchen. So fortified with some food, we climbed back into our Hilux, and sped
back onto the mud.

The road to Macapa

To our considerable surprise, only a further twenty or so
kilometres, the mud turned to asphalt, and a newly laid and perfect road lay
before us all of the remaining 450kms to Macapá. The road had been completed
within the past couple of years, and now the journey was only eight hours, and
within what seemed to be the blink of an eye, we were arriving in the Amapá
capital in time for dinner.

Macapá, it must be noted, is one of only two Brazilian
towns of any size to actually lie on the Amazon, and the other is Santarem;
Manaus is on the Rios Negro and Solimões, and Belem lies on the Baia de Marujá,
at the end of the Rio Tocantins.

But that evening, such cartographic pedantry was
forgotten as we enjoyed a fine dinner at one of Macapás many riverside cafes;
watching the local folks out on their roller blades, and whizzing around in
rapid storms, enjoying the gentle air we really rather forgot that we were in a
dangerous place. I wish that we had stayed for at least one more day.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Cabo Verde is a very odd place, which is possibly the best reason to travel to these islands. It is an country that
is comprised of ten islands, each of which purports to offer visitors a very
different experience, and from an initial and hasty overview, they are correct.
Tourists to Cabo Verde, and astonishingly there are many, may be disappointed
if they only go to Sal, the primary island; it is from exploring the others
that an appreciation for the distinct Cabo Verdean experience will be drawn.

It is not quite Europe, and nor should it even be considered
fleetingly to be so, although I am sure that many arrive here thinking that it
is a sort of “Southern Canary Islands”, but it isn't; it is not really Africa, although their
football team plays in the African Cup, and geographically it most certainly
qualifies. It is, above all, another fascinating Atlantic Island.

I am currently in Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente, the
island where the fine singer Cesaria Evora was born, and after whom the
international airport was named. She would, I am sure, be delighted.

Driving around the island, an achievement that can be attained
in about three hours (thoroughly), was odd; long, inter-community cobbled
highways, empty villages looking abandoned by, one thinks, holiday-makers away
from their second homes. It was easy to realise how the Martian Rover must
feel, slowly driving around in search of life.

Then suddenly there is life. A small village practicing hard
for the upcoming carnival; kids young and old, drumming and dancing in the
streets, buildings painted in some day-glow pastel colours or simply of plain
breeze block, fishing boats along the shoreline and all around the rather
ghostly landscape of brooding volcanic rock.

It is a cross, I think, between Iceland and a Caribbean
island. There are the mysterious landscapes with high peaks coated in clouds,
dark highways and lush valleys that seem to have found life; there are
agricultural patters obvious in the country dating back centuries but now
abandoned, leaving one to wonder where this knowledge went, and what it was.
Communities are scruffy but somehow cheerful, with their buildings, or perhaps
a quarter of them, painted in distinctive coral, blue and the ever-popular
orange, but all too a vivid degree that lightens one’s senses and brings a
smile.

The road along the eastern shoreline

Every so often a café or restaurant; some open, some not,
offering the usual fare of fresh fish with vegetables. The fish is delicious,
the vegetables can be monotonous (just how much boiled cassava can a chap
eat?), but there is hope, and more restaurants to try.

Fine, fresh fish

There is little work beyond the usual government employment
in education, maintenance and, of course, “governing”; work in the tourist
industry is here, but so many Cabo Verdeans have left to find work abroad, and
thus the direct flights to Fortaleza in Brazil and Boston. Portugal, too, is
home to a large expatriate population who, like diasporas everywhere, like the
money but miss their homes terribly.

And still tourists arrive; the airport in Sal sported four
Tui flights as I flew to Sao Vincent; direct charters from London, Amsterdam,
Stockholm and Helsinki in two hours one afternoon, and they are not alone.
Thousands of Europeans arrive here, and Sal is renowned for being one of the
primary kite-surfing destinations in the world, but kite-surfing requires wind,
and tourists not here to bounce on and off waves find the wind of the windward
islands a touch overpowering.

But only 30 minutes to the west lies Sao Vicente, with its wind-breaking
mountains, and yet farther west, well out in the Atlantic Ocean lies the island
of Sao Antao, my next destination.

From my short experience, I like Cabo Verde; we will see how
the next ten days, and the exploration of Sao Antao, Fogo and Brava unfurl …

Friday, February 6, 2015

French Guyana is not known for much. Its history is shady,
its current politics virtually unknown, but the country does have an icon for
tourists, and that is the penal colonies, and in particular the character of
Papillon. The story of Papillon, Devil’s Island and the amazing escapes immortalised in the movie with Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen has fascinated
us for decades, and is a very strong lure to this very interesting, but rather
remote country.

An old cell block - Isles de Royale

Devil's Island, seen over the convicts' swimming pool

Devil's Island

France used these brutal places both to hide the most incorrigible
convicts, although
some of the deportees might not really fit that bill, but also as a rather weak
attempt to colonise their bit of “The Guyanas”.

The Guyanas, either three, four or five of them, depending
on how one counts, are bits of land that were conveniently ignored when in 1493
the pope carved up Latin America between the Portuguese and Spanish. Papal
edicts carried no weight with the Protestants in the North East, and they have
squabbled and swapped land pretty well continuously for the past five hundred
years.

Convicts sentenced to serve their imprisonment in one of the distant colonies (Nouvelle Caledonia was another with a significant penal colony) would sail from Europe to the reception centre at St. Laurent du Maroni, and then spend the balance of their sentences in either a logging camp, the prison in St. Laurent or on one of Les Isles du Salut. The idea of the islands’ powers of salvation comes from the fact that the climate there is so much easier than the mainland, and the possibility of actually living through one’s sentence; and if one actually survived, those sent for eight years or less were obliged to spend an equal time in the colony, the principle of doublage, and those sentenced to more than eight years were obliged to remain in South America for the rest of their lives.

Only the guards were buried

The death cells

No wonder that folks tried to escape, and although rarely
successful, some did manage to get away. The most famous in North America and
Europe was Henri Charrière, known as Papillon, and whose escapades have left
readers and viewers speechless with wonder and perhaps admiration.

But here’s the thing; the book Papillon was almost completely untrue. Charrière, himself, was a
small-time pimp who was accused and convicted of an underworld murder. He
certainly served time in St. Laurent, but was never on the islands, and seems
to have lived a fairly bland life in this hideous environment.

The book, however, was a blockbuster. It is, however, very
difficult to separate from the fine work by Rene Belbenoit, Dry Guillotine, which was published in
1938, and for aficionado’s of the whole Papillon story, and the French penal system,
it is a magnificent book.

Belbenoit himself, credits a number of escapades to other
prisoners, but did, himself, escape from the islands, and with several others
washed up on the shores of Trinidad some seventeen days later.

The islands, and French Guyana itself, hold a strange
attraction; spending time on les Isles du
Salut is a truly moving experience, and one that I recommend to all. Nature
is speedily reclaiming the prison, and watching the roots of giant trees slowly
enter and crush the hideous cells cannot fail to fascinate.

The dormitory of Le Reclusion; Silence at all times

In addition to the islands, there is a great deal of history
in the river community of St. Laurent du Maroni, the site of the penal
administration, and the landing port for all convicts arriving from Paris. The
town in unmistakably designed as a colonial centre; the architecture of the old
camp, the staff buildings, the hospital and the fine mansions for upper
management are all visible today, and the community itself has embraced tourism
and interpretation of these sites.

I love St. Laurent, and appreciate the slow nature of this
river town; wandering through the camps, looking deeply into the eyes of the
convict whose statue “Le Bagnard” sits outside the tourist office, listening
closely to the sounds of the forest unchanged for two hundred years gives a
powerful sense of the despair and isolation that all who worked or were imprisoned here must
have felt.

The Convict - St. Laurent du Maroni

The history of the penal system in French Guyana is
fascinating, the landscape surreal, and the islands, while today they lie peacefully
in the tropical breeze, offer sudden and jarring glimpses into their dreadful
past. Images and sounds flood one’s imagination, and only by stepping back a
pace or two, and glancing at the blue sea can you realise how simple it is to
step from one century to another, and perhaps from one life into a completely
and utterly different existence.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

The Suriname River is fascinating, and for tourists
travelling to Suriname, the communities along its bank offer a spectacular
experience. Surinamese jungle lodges are great, and really offer visitors a
wide range of standards, accessibility and activity.

Some time ago I wrote about Kabalebo, a lodge deep in the
rain forest, and accessible only by air; it is a rather odd place, and worth
considering on any trip to the country. The Surinamese government built some decades
ago, several air strips in the jungle to assist the development of minerals, hydro
power and other economic opportunities. Some worked out, and others failed; one
such failure was Kabalebo, but the idea of a runway in the pristine rain forest
was too much for some developers to ignore, and they took advantage of the strip
to build the lodge.

The Lodges

The Suriname River, though, is quite different. There are twenty-two lodges, each associated to some degree or another with a local village, and
developed as a part of an economic development project. One may think that 22
might be a touch over the top, but there they are, and they are waiting.

They range in standards from moderate, offering fairly
basic but clean, en-suite
accommodation, to “back to basic” huts, offering a roof to keep the rain away
and a hammock. One can mix and match, and indeed one of the most interesting
packages that exists is a five-night program that offers three nights in one of
the better resorts, Dan Paati, and one each in a primitive resort and a
Back-to-Basic camp.

Dan Paati Resort

Waiting for the canoes in Atjuna

Travelling upstream is fun; once one leaves the bus,
agility is required to get into the canoe for the three-hour journey, but once
is the route is sound and the boatmen steady. It is truly eye-opening to see the amount of
traffic on the river; freight canoes carrying anything and everything to the
villages, passenger “buses”, school buses, family outings, some tourist
traffic, but little compared to the constant stream of canoes that were making
their way up and down the river. Ponchos are provided in case the rain comes
down, and away one goes, past quintessentially African communities until we
reach Dan Paati.

Originally built by a Dutch insurance company as a part
of an aid project, a year or so ago they donated the resort to a tour company who work
closely with the village of Dan. It has a significant economic impact on the
community, as over thirty villagers are employed by Dan Paati in the operation of
the resort. It was great; a place to relax (no wi-fi), to swim in either their
pool or in the river, and a great place to meet fellow travellers in the
evening in the open lounge area.

I then headed further upstream and downmarket to the
village of Pingpe, and their jungle lodge. This was a treat on many fronts, and
although the accommodation was basic, it was absolutely fine, and the couple
who ran the resort, Chapeau and his sister, were both from the local village, and
fantastic hosts. Descended from escaped slaves in the 1760s, their family had
lived in Pingpe for hundreds of years.

They explained the basic history of the river, and noted
that periodic visitors from Africa, particularly those from Benin, recognise
the village life, their customs and beliefs, and indeed one river-community is
called Diumi, a variant on ”Dahomey”, the capital of Benin. Diumi is a special
village, and the only one that white visitors are prohibited from entering, as
it houses the tribe’s sacred place for the spirit that protects the community
from any further slavery.

Chapeau Siesa

And slavery is an open subject; minimised somewhat by Chapeau saying “It was all about money; it is what they did in those days”, and
seemingly a part of history that has been successfully shrugged away as the
Maroons developed their social structures and lives in the forest, reflecting
the African lives that they had left behind.

It was a fascinating stay; Chapeau was an excellent
companion, and as we walked through the forest explained so many elements of
life away from “civilisation” that I was left bewildered and quite astonished
by their prowess. “We were river people”, he said, “The Amerindians were the
people of the forest”; it is a distinction that I would like to find out for
myself, and I am already planning a trip to the very south of the country in
2016.

A Tarantula Spider's nest

Within the past ten years, archaeologists have discovered
hundreds of petroglyphs in caves near the Brazilian border, and beautifully
carved obelisks; these finds, added to linguists bewilderment as to why the local
Amerindian tribes have a language with the grammatical and structural
complexity of modern-day languages all hint to the existence of a massive and
powerful nation dating back millennia. The petroglyphs have already been dated
to before 3,000BC, predating the Aztec and Inca societies by many years.

To travel south, stay in the Amerindian villages and have
the opportunity to visit these extraordinary places will have to wait for a
year!

And so, the river behind me, the resorts of Pingpe and
Dan Paati sliding away, I headed west to one of the more peculiar places that
it has ever been my privilege to visit.